Swan Boats-2008 version

I always think back to the first trip to the ducklings when Jimmy was just a couple of months old. Everyone walking by stopped and stared at how cute he was sitting on top of one of the ducklings. He had this huge head but never stopped laughing the whole time. We havent missed a year since. Hopefully they dont get sick of it.

Today was the day we decided to make the annual trek to the Common and see the Swan boats. We found the ducklings and the baseball field full of puddles too. To start Jimmy was taking batting practice to the right of home plate. After his two tennis ball pitches Laura and Catherine would take turns with the wiffle ball bat and wiffle ball. Jack would come in and join whenever he wanted. I love it when he hits the ball and run run runs away. The ball kept going into the infield puddles so we moved the action to the makeshift homeplate Jimmy had carved out behind second base. Jimmy took one pitch and hit it far over the center field fence. The look of excitement on his face was priceless as he raised his hands way up. He kept asking me in the afternoon if I remembered him hitting that homerun as he went over it again. Its amazing how good he is getting in baseball.

Later on, we were sitting on the grass in between fastballs and soccer ball games when Laura and Catherine went up to these two girls who were braiding each others hair and asked them to braid their hair. The girls asked us if we minded and we didnt.

After we got home Umple Eddie, Kevin and Emma and their kids and Nana and Doe came over for some Cheeseburgers and hot dogs. I kinda burned the hot dogs but they were eaten anyway. Umple Eddie started a fire and we ate smoors until shower time. The kids really love their Umple.

***** PS to aunt Patricia, I changed your picture from my Godfather day.

Raindrops keep falling in baseball land

Friday, JimJim and I went to the Museum of Science to go to see the baseball Exhibit. After that We met up with Aunt Jo to go to the Red Sox. The Blatt's were also at the museum of science and Jacob came with us to Fenway. One of the pictures shows the little buggahs looking through the window at Little chicks being born out of the eggs. I remember when I was little watching the little chickies come out of the eggs.
At Fenway it started raining and never stopped. We sat in the Pavillion seats and they were awesome. It was so comfortable just sitting with my feat on the seat in front and looking down at the green monster. They didnt even need a game. We werent getting rained on so we could relax. Earlier when we were at the baseball exhibit at the Museum of Science, one of exhibits had a clip of James Earl Jones from Field of Dreams when he was talking about Bazeball(I love the way he said bazeball) and how people will come to the diamond just to look and dream. Its hard not to compare that scene to us just sitting there staring at the left field wall while the raindrops keep falling and no game is being played in front of us.
Most of the time Jimmy and Jacob stayed at the railing dancing and feeling the drops come from the roof above us. Jim kept going to the bathroom every couple of minutes and Jacob kept talking about the lightning that he would see in a distance and how the rain looks like it will stop shortly. The clouds were dark and darker above us. They told us how boring it was but it didnt seem like they were having a bad time at all. If you plopped a table in front of us and served us some drinks I would think that the atmosphere was better than any other restaurant could provide for us, even if the food was served in recycled brown pizza boxes.




went to the museum of science first with the blatts

Some Random Pics

Just some random pics while I'm watching the olympics.

Trevor
Christina


Baby Erin

More Vacation

The Hillbilly Minivan wasnt even home for a couple of hours on Monday before we had to run out to the baseball game at Spins park. Jack stayed with Nana and we took the other three. Before the first inning was over that ole familiar rain came crashing down on us. After being totally soaked Jimmy and Laura wanted to stay so Lyn took Catherine out a little early and came back and picked us up in the sixth inning. Aunt Estelle organizes a fmily baseball party every year and it was pretty well attended considering the weather. When Lyn was leaving the cop outside gave Catherine a baseball and Jimmy and Laura both got some autographs from the canaligator creature.
I dont know what it is but we really cant sit around too long, so this morning we all went to the coffee shop. After that we went to see Black Gordon the train, rode on the trolley. After that we were headed onto the train and before we got inside we decided to go to the Revolving museum and then to the museum across the street. At the Revoling museum they had alot of exhibits for the kids. At one of them, they had this artistic car type vehicle with all types of musical instruments on it such as drums and such. It is not the type of thing that you are supposed to climb inside of, but...........of course. thankfully there wasnt any damage. It was Jack.
Once we got out of there Catherine and Laura and Jack stayed home with mommy and Jimmy and I went to play tennis at the courts. There were six courts and we were the only ones there so every time a ball went east or west it was quite a run for us to grab the little yellow ball. Jimmy wasnt the only one that wasnt exactly hitting the ball straight. This game also ended with buckets of rain. Jimmy told me what a good time he was having. He has been very good the last two days because he has been thanking me for everything.
The wonderful day continued when the three oldest accompanied me to the movies at 3pm to see Wall E. Catherine passed out and JImmy fell asleep for a little while too. I told Laura that the snacks are going to be cut down on. Especially by me..

We made it through the Rain

Again, whenever these two get together problems erupt.

Have to add a little Barry into everything. Vacation house was an awesome time for all of us. We would love to have a house like that for the summer every year but that is wishful thinking. Its only money. Jimmy and Laura are turning into the typical brother and sister. They arent that bad but just enough to drive you crazy.

Kyle and Christina slept over on Sunday night. They are both good kids. Kyle is so funny. He asked me if I'm embarassed to drive a minivan or is it only when I'm drunk.

We learned a couple of key lessons over the weekend. Lesson number one is that white shorts are transparent when wet and lesson number 2 is that rasberry vodka is not nutritional, nor should it be part of your lifetime diet. Just absolutely unspeakable stuff.

Jack and Catherine have overcome their fears of the water and both had no problem going up to their belly and walking around. Catherine had so much fun this week. This year has been so fun just to stand by and watch her in everything that she does. She fascinates me. At one point Laura, Makayla, and some other girls were making a pool with sand walls and putting water in teh middle. Catherine stood and watched them for a little while and she was so interested in what they doing. She burst into action and got a pail and filled it with water and slowly took care to stare at what she did. I could see the neurons working. She seemed to be so happy with herself and what she was doing. There were so many of these moments all week. I kept thinking to myself that I could sit and watch her all day.

Laura is a social butterfly and made new friends with a bunch of girls all week. One of the girls I wasnt too fond of because she pushed Jack twice. The other girls, Mia, was a doll. I was sad to see her parents leave.

On the last day we were at the beach it started to rain (again) and just prior to the rain Jimmy had gone to the car to get something. We were walking back to get some of the things to put in the car and Jimmy noticed that his brand new volleyball was not where he had just placed it. He FLIPPED. We both went looking and asking people. I felt bad for him because I could tell it really hurt. One of the people from the Association came over Just as Jimmy was yelling "call 911" . Well, luckily someone returned the ball a couple of hours later. Nana had just bought it for him the day before and he really took some pride in it. We were all happy about it.

On Sunday Bill, Thresa, Maura, Aunt Chrissy and Uncle David, Aunt Janie, Jackie, Makayla and Dominick all came up to visit and we had some awesome ribs on our barbie.

Friday

Rock, paper, scissors

Jack left for a nap before the camera came out

My sixth grade teacher and a Day at the beach

Laura made a new friend named Mia. Mia's brother was Sebastian and he and Jimmy became fast friends too. They had another kid named Chloe that made fast friends with Catherine. At around 10:30 this morning we decided to go to the beach even though the sky was dark. Mia's mommy was with her three kids for the same reasons and at first we were the only ones on the beach. Eventually we willed the sun to show up for three hours.
We were sitting on the chairs looking out onto the wonderful water when Lyn told me that she recognized the guy sitting directly behind us on a beach chair. She said he looked like my elementary school teacher named Dave. I quickly dismissed that thought after taking a quick glance. Sure enough, about a half hour later I was bringing Laura to the bathroom, walked right by him and sure enough it was my sixth grade teacher. We ended up talking for quite a while with alot of laughs.
We stayed on the beach until about 5pm.

Moose Sighting and Preaching

In the morning the three oldest sit on the other side of the counter and Doe is cooking on the griddle. Jimmy calls it the "Doe show" and they all stare at him cooking like he is a cooking show. In the morning Jimmy yelled up to Laura to hurry up so they could watch the Doe Show.

The pictures werent working for me once again. Today the rain decided to come back and soak us up. We went to Weirs Beach area and to this indoor place that had all kinds of arcade games, candlepin bowling and bumper cars. The bumper cars were these little cars and they lasted about two minutes before the time ran out on them. I would have to run out on the track and put a token in the car for another two minutes. The place was absolutely packed as everyone else had the same idea. Jimmy, Laura and Catherine were circling around the bumper track and I was standing in the middle of the track looking around for each one of them to run out of pep. At one point, I looked to the outside of the track and this lady was talking, no yelling at me in a loud manner. It startled me for a second and I asked her if she was talking to me. Assuring me that she was talking to me, she let me know that there were other people waiting to use the cars. If I hadnt waited for thirty minutes to let the kids get a car I might have just ignored her. Instead, I explained to her that I had waited a while and the kids had only been on the cars for fifteen minutes. Miss Nosey, again in a loud manner, disagreed with me again. It was at this point I informed her that she was a liar. She kept speaking loudly. At this point I had no other option; I had to inform her (tone for tone) the good Lord Jesus does not think highly of those who lie. I did it in my best preacher tone too. I may have even called her a sinner. Lyn was mortified but understands my mental illness.

On the way home Lyn wanted to take a little detour and see some of the neighboring towns and beaches. Up ahead we saw about ten cars pulled to the side of the road. Being the rubberneckers that we are we pulled to the side of the road and the kids got to see their very first moose. Pretty cool.

Story Land

Dont think she knew the sign was there

Was a good day. Everyone was cute and happy. Laura went down the shute again, I dont know why, because she cries every year when she goes into the log roller coaster. we got another picture and for the third year in a row she looks absolutely petrified.

rain rain rain here the last couple of days. We entertained ourselves by surrounding the computer singing songs, the numa numa song and of course sweet caroline and hey there delilah, chipmunks. Such musical kids. The rain has stopped so we are heading to the water.

Umple Eddie was going to come here today but had an accident and damaged a couple of ribs.

vacation

Both nights we've been here it has rained at dinnertime. John has drawn the short straw in regards to cooking on the grill both nights. He seems so happy here on the deck. the burgers were pretty good though. A little rain cannot let us down can it?

We are on vacation. Got this awesome house in NH. Swimming everyday, in between the raindrops and then some shopping. Laura treated me to a puppet show the day before we left. I had to paint the paper bags so they could talk to us.

Jimmy, Laura and Catherine all are swimming so good it amazes me. Today both Jimmy and Laura went to the distance dock and were jumping off into the deep water. Laura had her swimmies but Jimmy went without. He is getting more daring. Lyn had a little booboo with the rear drivers side tire. Doe and I had to travel a couple of hours this morn to get a new tire. I swear the people up here are smoking dope.

The other day i was downstairs ironing my clothes when Lyn asked me to come upstairs. Jimmy, as usual was out on the front lawn running the bases but there was a lady that had come walking by that caught Jimmy's attention. Lyn and I stood at the front window and watched Jimmy speak to this lady for what seemed like forever. I dont know what the heck he was saying to her but the conversation seemed to be one-sided just by seeing the way his hands were moving. When he came into the house i asked him what the lady said and he told me that she just said hello....oh god. I dont even know if she spoke English. Lyn gave him the lecture about strangers but you know how good that lasts.that goes.